The winner of Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary was President Barack Obama.
While Mitt Romney will almost certainly still win his party's nomination, the best reality show on TV -- the Republican primaries -- rolls on now with four stubborn contestants still on the island.
Newt Gingrich, the big winner on Saturday night, will continue to attack Romney and Obama together as rich, elitist Washington insiders. Never mind that Gingrich made over $3 million last year and has lived much of his life in DC as a congressman and lobbyist. Gingrich won in the South Carolina tradition of thinly veiled racism, declaring in his victory speech that Obama was "the best food stamp president this country's ever had."
Gingrich is morally and temperamentally unfit to be president, and he won't be. But he will annoy the heck out of Romney, and make Romney show his irritable side.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum will keep pushing Romney to move further and further to the right on social issues and further away from where mainstream America is on those topics. He may also prompt Romney to wear sweater vests now and then, which can't be good for his image over the long run.
And Ron Paul, everybody's favorite crazy old uncle, will push Romney to put America back on the gold standard or something.
The longer this goes on, the less time Romney will have to reconnect with Planet Earth, and the more he'll be forced to go on the record with positions way out of the comfort zones of swing voters.
South Carolinians like to say that they pick presidents. They may have done it again. His name is Barack Obama.
